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Saturday, December 29, 2018

Vacant Ritual Assembly is an OSR zine put out by Clint Krause and Red Moon Medicine Show. Issue #1 came out in 2014, and (among other things) describes the Ghoul Market. The Ghoul Market is an underground bazzar when denizens of the underworld ply their wares. As described in the zine: Beneath a defiled chapel, the scavengers of the dead emerge from their tunnels to barter with the living and the damned. Inhuman travelers peruse black-shrouded stalls and dine on artisanal cadavers.I love the Ghoul Market, and I'm very excited that my players will be visiting it soon. According to the article, at any time 1d10 magic items can be found for sale at the Ghoul Market (I will drop that to 1d6). This gave me the flmsy excuse to come up with a bunch of interesting magic items of low-to-middle power that I canuse to seperate the PCs from their money. Below is my list of random magic items. Many of them are one-use, so they shouldn't throw off the pwer balance too much. I just kind of eye-balled the prices based on magic item construction costs in the LotFP book. I don't claim that the prices are mathematically perfect. The list includes 16 new magic items, along with a boring old healing potion, plus random scrolls, wands, and spellbooks. Most of these items are sold by Handsome Gamal, a strangely charismatic,
partially mummified ghoul who wears dusty old silks and tarnished gold jewelry. He will absolutely not warn his customers about the negative aspects of any of his goods.

Use and enjoy!

Random Magic Items from the Ghoul Market

1) Dead Man’s Tobacco

Sticky, foul-smelling, black tobacco in a skin pouch.

Blow smoke into corpse’s mouth to speak with dead.

Ask 3 questions. Corpse can be dead for any amount of time, but
mouth, lips, and tongue must be intact.

Price: 1000sp per dose

2) Bottled Undead Faerie

Emaciated gray faerie with piranha teeth in a smoky glass
bottle.

Feed blood to make faerie glow with light only donor can
see, illuminating like a lantern. 1 turn per hp of blood.

One use only, then the faire turns to ash.

Price: 1000sp

3) Hand of Glory

Mummified left hand of a hanged man. Dipped in human tallow
and wicks placed in each finger to make a macabre handle.

Casts sleep on everyone in a house. Lasts 1 turn per finger

Price: 7000sp

4) Zombie Wine

Black bottle of think, glowing green liquor.

Feed to a corpse to create 2HD zombie. Loyal to the person
who fed it the wine, for now. (Loyalty starts at 12. Loyalty is reduced by 1
each night. Test loyalty every midnight.)

Mix with water and drink. You become immune to normal
weapons for 1d4 turns.

You take triple damage from fire.

You cannot benefit from cleric spells, and can be
turned/destroyed as undead.

You take 1d6 CON damage per turn of duration after effect
ends (save vs posion for half).

Price: 2000sp

9) Love Potion

Blood-red syrup that smells of opium and rancid meat in a
clay vessel with two spouts.

Someone drinks half, someone else drinks the other half. If
both fail their saves vs. poison, the two fall madly in love until the spring
equinox.

Price: 500sp

10) Satyr Juice

Milky, pearlescent potion in an obscene brass flask.

The next time the drinker has sex, they will become pregnant
regardless of sex, health, or biology.

Price: 500sp

11) Memory Mirror

Small silver hand mirror decorated with Greek goddesses.

Reflects the image of the last person to look into it.

Cost: 3000sp

12) Inquisitor Cobra

Three-foot long cobra with a grey-and black hide and a
yellow cross on its hood.

Whisper a question to the cobra and point to another person.
The cobra will ask that person the question. If they answer truthfully, the
cobra bites them. (+4 to hit, 4d6 CON damage. Save vs poison for half.)

After each question, roll 1d6. On a 1, cobra says “My work
here is done!” and dies.

Price: 2000sp

13) Brass Goat Statue

Fist-sized sculpture of a shaggy goat with large horns and a
curious expression on its face.

Weights 15lbs, but somehow doesn’t take up an encumbrance
slot.

Through subtle space warpage, allows the character to carry
5 more items before gaining their first encumbrance point (using LotFP encumbrance
rules).

Once per day (at 1d24 o’clock), 1-in-6 chance of “eating” a
random item the PC is carrying.

This chance grows by 1 per day until the goat eats
something, then resets to 1-in-6.

Price: 2000sp

14) Ghost Shroud

Old and dusty funeral shroud of stained gray linen.

Wrap it around yourself and become ethereal, invisible,
silent, and can fly for 1d6 turns.

At the end of the duration, roll 2d6+CHA modifier.

10+: You return to normal, and assuming you weren’t in
flight or inside a solid object, you’re fine.

7-9: You return to normal, as above, but you’ve lost
something in the ethereal plane.

6 or less: You are forever lost in the ethereal, and something returns
to the physical world in your place.

Price: 6000sp

15) Wolf Heart Woad

Thick purple paste in a small bone jar.

Spend 1 round smearing on your face and eyes.

At the start of the next round, before initiative is rolled,
you turn into a wolfman.

This transformation destroys your clothes and armor, and you
drop the rest of your gear.

While transformed you act on your own initiative roll. You
have an AC of 14 (+DEX modifier). You are immune to fear and charm effects.

You take double damage from silver weapons, and are burned
by holy water (1d6 damage).

Your movement speed is increased by 50% (180’ in LotFP).

You have +2 to attack, and can make two claw attacks for 1d6
damage each.

Every round you must attack the nearest living target,
friend or foe, or move towards the nearest target.

You can suppress this bloodlust for 1 round with a
successful save vs magic (-2 at night, -4 if the moon is full).

The transformation ends after 1d4 turns, or you’ve been
unable to attack someone (successful or not) for 6 rounds.

Price: 2000sp

16) Nice andPleasant
Tea Kettle

A small tin tea kettle painted with simple blue and yellow
flowers.

The kettle can make up to 4 cups of tea at a time, in the
usual fashion.

Once per day, you can brew an usually pleasant batch of tea.
A wounded person drinking a cup of this unusually pleasant tea heals 1 hp.

A person can only benefit from this unusually pleasant tea once
per day, and the tea loses potency if it grows cold.

Monday, December 24, 2018

Last weekend I ran the first session of our new Lamentations of the Flame Princess
campaign, prenteously called “Ashes of Angels.” This session served as a short
session 0 where we went through character creation, discussed setting info and
themes, and acclimatized our new player to the group. Character creation went
fairly quickly, with shopping taking up most of the time. It went a bit quicker
at the end of the session, when a couple of players rolled up new characters.

I had my players roll 3d6 straight down the line for the
stats, and let them swap two scores. If they still didn’t like those numbers, I
allowed them to take those numbers and make a loyal 0-level retainer for their
PC and use a pre-determined array of numbers to plug in where they wanted (13,
12, 10, 9, 9, 6). I mockingly called this this “Premade Array for Baby Cowards.”
I was delighted that all my players decided to play their rolls where they lay
(with the optional swap). No henchmen for this group yet!

Two Alices! Unfotunately, they didn’t start out with any
crazy powers.

I took Zak’s advice and started the campaign with the party
in a dungeon. The last thing they remembered was being in Berlin, when they
blacked out or were knocked unconscious. Sometime later they wake up in a cold
jail cell stripped of all their gear and weapons.

“Psst… Are you awake?” says a voice in the dim light of a
single torch. As the party awakes, they look through the bars of their cell to
the other cell across the hall. There sits Ana Fischer, a young blonde woman, “country
pretty” in tattered clothes and showing clear signs of torture. “We must get
out of here before the witch hunter returns!”

The party begins examining their surroundings, looking for a
way out. Madeline finds an old bronze cloak pin under a pile of moldy straw.
Maybe it will serve as a make-shift lock pick? Meanwhile, Belinda detects a
slight draft coming from a crack in corner wall of the cell.

Unfortunately for them, this is old-style D&D! Searching
an area or picking a lock takes a full 10 minute turn. Before they can try to
unlock their door, the witch hunter, Lazarus Holtz (cleric 2), arrives with a
couple of goons (0-level).

“Good, I see you heretics are awake,” sneers the witch
hunter. “Fear not, I have thumbscrews enough for all of you. You will all
confess your crimes in time. But first, Frau Fischer has an appointment with
the stake.” The goons drag Ana kicking and screaming out of her cell. The party
try to taunt Holtz and his men closer to the bars so they can grab them, but
the witch hunter is too crafty and cautious. The PCs ineffectively pelt the
villains with rotten straw and pebbles, as Holtz and company leave with Ana.

Now the PCs feel like they have a time limit if they want to
save the pretty peasant girl (they do!). Thankfully, Holtz is long winded, and
they can hear him chanting litanies and accusations somewhere above them. Madeline
picks the lock on the cell door, while Belinda removes a few bricks in the
corner of the cell to find a narrow tunnel that leads into the dark where they
hear and smell running water. The tunnel is too cramped for some of the larger
party members to fit through (specifically Tranquilo, whose 18 CON makes him pretty
beefy, and Belinda, whose player previously described as “broad and curvy”).
They decide to take the safer route through the open door.

A store room near the cell reveals one of Holtz’s henchmen under a blanket, dead from vicious wounds that the PCs can’t quite identify.
Sadly the body has no weapons on it. Looking quickly in Ana’s cell, they only find an old
steel bucket full of stinking human waste. For now it is the party’s only
weapon.

The party sneaks down the hallway and around the corner
where thy find another store room and hear voices in low conversation. Hector
the Alice sneaks ahead to check out the voices, while the others examine the
store room. They find a few barrels of dried beans and horse feed, as well as a
small barrel of gunpowder and (more importantly) a variety of shovels and other
tools they can use as makeshift weapons (1d6 damage!). Hector discovers that the
voices belong to a couple of Holtz’s goons who are patiently cataloging the
party’s stolen gear. A plan is quickly formed.

Hector spreads the liquid waste from the bucket along the
hallway floor while the rest of the party hides behind the storeroom door or
around the corner. Hector then starts banging on the wall with his shovel,
attracting the attention of one of the goons. When the goon sees Hector, he
draws his sword and charges, fails his saving throw, slips on the filth, and
slides toward the store room door, where Hector splatters his head with a
shovel (100 xp for the first kill of the campaign!). The second goon is quickly
dispatched before he can raise an alarm. Flush with victory, the party quickly
recovers their gear and heads upstairs just as Holtz wraps up his “let’s burn a
witch” ritual.

The stairs lead up to the ground floor of a small ruined
tower in an old Roman fort. They PCs peek out into the overgrown courtyard. It’s
dark and heavy snow is falling. Ana Fischer is tied to a stake on a pile of
kindling, soaked with oil. A large, bound book sits on the pyre with her. Holtz
is there with some of his goons (two in the courtyard, two on the walls with
guns). The villains make their surprise roll, spot the PCs and combat begins!

After years of playing “modern” D&D, LotFP was brutal
and visceral. And while the individual rounds went quick, this combat went
pretty long. Most fights in 5th edition D&D seem to last maybe 3
or 5 rounds. This fight went on for over ten rounds, but it was never boring.
The free-form nature of old-style D&D gave my players the liberty to try
things they’d never think of attempting in newer D&D. I also used Cavegirl’s“Horrible Wounds” rules, which led to some very gory deaths, some dramatic
turn-arounds, and interesting long-term wounds. The combat started off well for
the party, but there was a streak of 3-or-4 rounds where the dice just weren’t
with them, and no one rolled higher than a 9.

At the start of combat, the party immediately splits (no
time for tactical discussions with recently met strangers!). Tranquilo runs out
to the courtyard to try and stop Holtz from lighting the pyre. Mortimer the
Alice expresses his frustration with the situation and discover a previously
non-existent secret door that leads out of the tower and outside of the fort. The
rest of the party follow him out this door and start to make their way around
the outside wall to where they hear picketed horses.

One tower gunman fires at the outside party, but misses due
to range. The other gunman fires at Tranquilo, but also misses. The fighter
quickly dispatches one of the Holtz’s sword-goons while the Witchhunter begins
casting a spell. “Surrender!” he shouts at the fighter, casting Command. Tranquilo drops his weapons and
goes to his knees. One of the goons slaps manacles on him and Holtz lights the
pyre. Ana screams, for she only has a few rounds before the flames reach her.

The rest of the party finds the villains' horses and mounts
up. Hector, with his high Charisma, even manages to befriend Holtz’s
ill-tempered war horse. They spur the horses and charge through the fort gates
into the courtyard!

Hector directs his new warhorse to leap over the fire and
knock Ana and the stake out of the flames. They succeed, but not well. The
horse catches on fire and bucks Hector off. Ana is free of her bonds, but has
caught on fire.

Mortimer uses his sword to strike the manacles off
Tranquilo, and the fighter lunges at Holtz. They roll around on the ground,
locked in combat, but brave Tranquilo has high DEX, but low STR (only a 6!).
Holtz’s gets the upper hand, and his thumb crushes one of Tranquilo’s eyes like
a grape. The rest of the party is occupied fencing with Holtz’s henchmen and
trying to extinguish Ana’s flames.

One of the goons hits Belinda and drops her to 0 hit points, driving
his blade in one side of her head and out the other. According to Cavegirl’s
Horrible Wounds table, she’s a “dead woman walking” and will die in 2 rounds. “I have a couple of dots in Chirurgy and a
fishing kit,” her player asks. “Can I quickly lash my face back together?” The
other players think this idea is hilarious, and so do I. Madeline’s player
mimics Stewey Griffin with glass in his forehead (“Uh oh! Do I leave it in or take it out??”)

“Okay, I say, but you need to make 2 successfully Chirurgy rolls.” Belinda rolls
her dice, and boom, a 1 and a 2. Two successes.

Try not to pick at that, Belinda.

“Okay, so now you have two inches of broken sword blade
sticking out of both sides of your head,

with fishing line and hooks holding
your face together. You look kind of like a cenobite. You’re at 1hp, but alive
and unconscious.” We all agreed that this was pretty fucking metal, and I don’t
regret fudging the rules a bit to make things more metal.

Meanwhile, things are going just as poorly for the rest of
the team. Holtz and Tranquilo are on their feet know, going at each other with
swords. Holtz gets in a good hit and severs Tranquilo’s arm (I really, really
love the Horrible Wounds table). Hector expresses his frustration and the Alice
table reveals that he has a small item hidden on his person. We decide that a
flintlock pistol is smaller than a breadbox and possible to conceal. The newly
discovered gun takes out one of the goons, but another goon slashes the Alice’s
guts wide open (100xp to his next character for the first death of the
campaign!). Mortimer finally manages to extinguish Ana, who is now horribly burned,
unconscious, but at least alive and not on fire. Madeline drags her to the relative
safety of the tower.

At this point, it’s pretty much the Holtz and two goons vs
Madeline, Mortimer, and nearly dead Tranquilo. The words “TPK” are on everyone’s
lips.

Madeline’s grave-robbin’ pick splatters one goon’s head, but
the other slices off her arm at the elbow. Mortimer the Alice expresses his
frustration is suddenly recalls that the style of breastplate that Holtz wears
has a structural defect under the left dorsal arm flap. He’s now +2 to hit the
witch hunter and manages to get a light stab in.

Madeline shoves the stump of her arm into the fire and
cauterizes the wound. This stops her from bleeding out, but she fails her save
and passes out from the pain. Holtz strikes Tranquilo again, and now the
fighter’s leg is ruined, along with his arm and eye. But with a surge of
adrenaline, the fighter’s sword finally strikes true and kills Holtz.

The remaining goon fails his morale check and turns tail to
run. “You have one round to live, Tranquilo” I say. “Do you want to try and
bind your wound? You have a 1-in-6 chance.”

“Nope,” he replies. “I’m going to try and go out in style.”
He throws his dagger at the fleeing goon, and drops him before he can escape. “From
Hell’s heart I stab at thee,” Tranquilo sneers as he dies.

The combat is over, and only three PCs remain alive. Two are
brutally wounded, along with NPC Ana.

GM’s Note: Ana
Fischer actually is a witch, and really is in league with Lucifer! If the
flames had killed her, she would have called out to her dark lord with her last
breath and trams formed into a flaming undead monstrosity. This didn’t happen,
but now I get to use her as a party complication as she tries to get the PCs
under her sway and find a new spellbook. Should be interesting!

At the end of the session, the surviving party members take
shelter in the ruined fort and try to mend their wounds. They have found plenty
of camping gear, so are relatively comfortable. They also found the witch
hunter’s treasure cache along with an annotated map of the surrounding area. Their
next move is to make their way to the small village of Nonsbeck. Madeline the
grave robber has also heard rumors of the Ghoul Market, and hopes someone there
can reattach her arm. They are also debating whether or not to explore the
tunnel they found in their jail cell.

Graveyard:

Tranquilo (Fighter 1)

Hector (Alice 1)

Treasure Gained:

300sp in German thalers

Large gold and ivory crucifix (worth 500sp, maybe more to the right
people)

Various mundane arms and equipment.

End Notes:

It's really nice to run some old-style D&D game, and I had a blast running this first adventure. I'm excited to see where my players go next. I'm laying out the groundwork to set them up for The Pale Lady, but it looks like we might take a quick visit to the Ghoul Market first. Of course, Nonsbeck will eventually have some horrible stuff happen to the townsfolk.

The intro adventure I put together fit nicely on two steno pages. Allow me to share...

Thursday, December 13, 2018

I’m very excited that I get to start running my new LotFP
campaign this weekend. I’ve wanted to run some faux-historical dark fantasy
stuff for a while, and I finally convinced my home group to give it a go. My
kid (a big fan of Dark Souls and Darkest Dungeon) was very eager to play,
and was helpful in getting my other players on board.

Session 0 is this weekend, which will mostly focus on
character creation, rules explanations, and setting introduction. I don’t
expect any of that to take too long, so we should be able to roll right into
the starting adventure in the same session (the PCs will need to escape from a
small, 5-room dungeon).

The following is the campaign introduction I shared to my
group’s Facebook group. I wanted to make sure my players had a solid idea of
what I was shooting for in the campaign. I thought I’d share it here.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Ashes of Angels

Campaign Concept:
The Holy Roman Empire, Brandenburg, Berlin, 1630. Central Europe has been
embroiled in war for 12 years with no end in sight. The conflict that will one
day be known as the Thirty Years War started as a clash between Protestants
and Catholics and has escalated into a land war between numerous family dynasties wrestling for control of Europe. Unceasing war has led to famine, which has
led to disease, which has led to the resurgence of witch hunts. Entire towns have
been wiped off the map, and cities lie half-empty. To the average peasant, it very
much seems like the world is ending. Maybe it is. Certainly, there are unnatural
things crawling through the night and haunting the hidden places of the world.

Player Characters:
You are outcasts and refugees from “normal” society. Maybe you’re a last survivor
of a ruined village. Maybe you’re a criminal or deserter. Maybe you’re an
actual witch. Maybe God talks to you in dreams. Maybe you’re just a woman with
strong opinions. Maybe you’re not actually a human. Now you’re trying to
survive and make your fortune by any means necessary. The War has uncovered
many lost treasures but has also reawakened pagan things that guard them. It’s
dirty work for dirty people like you.

System:Lamentations of the Flame Princess by
James Raggi. It’s a streamlined and compact version of old-style (B/X) Dungeon & Dragons designed for weird
fantasy and survival horror campaigns. Encumbrance and resource management will
be important. Combat is dangerous, and healing is slow. Black powder weapons
are common, and heavy armor isn’t. I’ve added a number of house-rules and hacks
to help fit the system to this specific setting, including reskinning the
classical fantasy races to more appropriate options.

Campaign Structure: The
campaign will be fairly open and sand-boxy. The PCs start as prisoners thrown
together, but after that you will have all of Europe (indeed, the world) to
play in. You might choose to become grave robbers, bounty hunters, pirates, or
anything else. There will be plenty of adventure and story hooks to latch onto
or avoid as you see fit. Treasure = XP in this system, so you’ll always want to
keep a lookout for the next big score.

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Ah, now this is the stuff I love doing. Now that I'm back to prepping and running some DIYD&D stuff, I get to make all sorts of cool things that I can share with folks.

My upcoming Lamentations of the Flame Princess game will take place in 17th century Central Europe. The PCs will have plenty of opportunities to travel, so that means I need to put together a random encounters table. Like all good encounter tables, I wanted to make sure the entries helped express the atmosphere and theme of the game world. In this case, it's bleak semi-apocalypse with war, disease, and witchcraft.

When I use this table, I'll probably cross out each encounter after it procs. Even with a d30 list, I don't want to have too many repeat encounters. Gotta' keep it fresh!

These encounters were written with LotFP in mind, but it should work well enough for aby other old-style D&D game.

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Who I Am

I am a long-time gamer who enjoys both new-style story games and old-style OSR stuff. I love drawing maps and goofy monsters. I help write, layout, and illustrate games for Hex Games, and I keep taking stabs at creating webcomics with mixed results. I talk about RPGs (and other things) at my Bernie the Flumph blog.